Kevin_Walter

Short story... I've been wanting to build a gaming/work PC for about 3 years now. I've browsed multiple times, picked parts for multiple builds, but something always came up and I couldn't afford even a cheap build. Finally scrounged up the cash about a month ago and decided to jump on a new rig. Now, before this time, I was limited to a "gaming" laptop. An Asus G50-vt, to be exact. It had pretty good specs when I bought it about 6 years ago. Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.14GHz, 512MB nVidia GeForce 9800m (a surprisingly decent card for a laptop then...), and a 1366x768 display. I loved that laptop. But when the display died, a key popped off, and it started overheating from near-constant use (even after opening it up and cleaning it multiple times), I decided it was well past it's time. My budget for this rig was $750. I guess you could call this my "first" build as... to be honest... it IS my first "gaming" build. Most of my previous experience with hardware comes from disassembling and re-assembling old PCs back in the late 90s and early 00s. So I can't really call myself an expert on modern hardware, but I do read a lot, so there's that lol. After MUCH deliberation and shopping, I chose the following build... Case: NZXT Source 210 (Windowed) Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz GPU: XFX "Double D" R9 270X RAM: G.Skill Sniper 8GB 1866MHz HDD: WD Blue 500GB PSU: Corsair CX500M At the end of the day, after shipping costs, the total price for this build came in at around $725. Not too shabby, in my opinion. Though I was a little annoyed when I noticed right after my order shipped that the Corsair CX600M was on sale for the same price that I paid for the 500M. I chose AMD because I felt it offered the best price/performance ratio. I am a web designer, and Intel is said to be better than AMD for using professional apps (I mostly just use Photoshop and run a local server for testing though), but let's face it... compared to what I was working with before (The Core 2 Duo in my laptop), just about anything I could purchase on Newegg was going to beat that by miles. My overall goal, however, was to end up with a PC with plenty of room for expansion. And I think I achieved that relatively well. If I want to, I could easily upgrade from an FX-6300 to an FX-8350, even though judging from reviews, that may not be the best idea with my chosen motherboard. I could also add a second R9 270X with Crossfire if I want an extra boost in games, Though I would have to upgrade my PSU for that. That's the part where I'm the most butthurt considering the sale price of the CX600M, but I can live with it, I guess. I know I am investing in a few things in the very near future, however. I've already purchased 3 BitFenix Spectre Pros. Two 140mm, and one 120mm. Newegg would only let me purchase one of the latter, for whatever reason. Although I'm not quite sure exactly which configuration I am going to install them in... I would also like to get some BitFenix Alchemy extension cables for my PCIe, EPS, and 24-pin ATX connectors, as the ones that came with my PSU are ugly, and quite difficult to work with (more on that later). Other than that, doubling up my RAM to 16GBs and getting an SSD and another hard drive or two for storage is an absolute must. But, I think what I have is a pretty damn good base for $750. Anyways... ON TO THE PICTURES! Obligatory "LOOK AT MY BOXES OF NEW THINGS!!!" pic... Also, I'm quite sorry for the quality of these first couple pictures... I took them with my phone. I didn't whip out my Canon until after I'd already installed the processor. But there isn't all that much to see anyway... Moving on: here's my motherboard. Personally, I think it looks sexy. I wasn't TRYING to make everything in this rig match, but it ended up that way. Everything is either black or a dark charcoal color. And now for the real pics... All of my parts unboxed and laid out for gawking. I actually didn't expect the GPU to be this large... Sexy motherboard with CPU and stock heatsink/fan installed as well as RAM. I'm not all that interested in overclocking (I generally like things to last as long as possible, and I like my computers stable, so OC'ing them has never my bag...). I would like to get an aftermarket cooler someday. A custom watercooling loop would be nice someday, but it's expensive, and since I don't do the whole overclocking thing, it would probably just be a waste of money. Although, I have no AC, and even though I'm in Ohio, it does hit 100 degrees from time to time in the summer, so at least a liquid solution would keep temps down a bit more than air could on those hot days. Though I would need a different case before really considering that. There isn't much room for even a small radiator, reservoir, and pump in this one. Here's the 24-pin connector that I'm sure comes with all of the PSUs in the CXM series. I don't like how it was sleeved at all. It looks decent enough, but they used that extra-thick bit of heatshrink that is literally impossible to bend, which left me with 2 options. I could either leave it there and have a bunch of extra cabling sticking out into my case and blocking my 5.5 inch bays (which I'm not using anyway, but that's beside the point)... or I could snip off the heatshrink, probably void my warranty in the process, but end up with something a little prettier. Which I did. Though that was probably a stupid thing to do considering my plans to buy extension cables anyway... Unfortunately, I didn't take any "after" pics, so you'll just have to take my word for it and see the end result in the next pics. And here we are with the motherboard and the PSU installed. I had some issues routing the EPS connector for my CPU. I wanted to run it up the back and through the cable-management holes above the motherboard, but the connector was too large to fit through there, so I was once again left with two options. I could either route it around the board, making the inside of my case that much uglier, or I could squeeze it in between the motherboard and the motherboard tray. I had my reservations about doing this, but there was enough room to squeeze it in through the cutout on the tray and around the edge of the board with minimal contact. This will complicate things once I get those extensions though, as I'll have to pull the motherboard out to re-route the extensions. And here is the finished product. And an extra shot showing my cable-management. As I said, nothing too fancy yet... but it runs really well. I've been playing Battlefield 4 on it for a couple of weeks now everything on High with the exception of textures and texture filtering, which are on ultra. I also have AA off, but I get around 70-80fps on average. Which is more than good enough for me. I'll add more pictures to this thread as I add more things. Hopefully I'll end up with a nice $1400 rig by the end of the year.

If there are frequently other people getting on other computers and trying to do more than browse.... such as watching youtube or Netflix... then it will kill your connection. Try playing when other people are offline and see if the problem persists. Also, your router should have built-in security options, such as creating a WEP pass-phrase. All routers have different methods for accessing their admin panels, but it usually involves connecting to the router via an IP. The most common is 192.168.1.1... just simply type that into a browser and you should access the controls of most routers. If you need more help, check out www.portforward.com . The site is meant to help you forward ports (duh ), but it also has instructions for accessing most routers available so that you can do that. Also, since we seem to be doing this... I'm actually supposed to have an asynchronous connection (10mb down, 5mb up), but speedtest always shows me with relatively equal speeds both ways. I'm not complaining.

It's more than sufficient. Gaming has very little to do with bandwidth. You can play Battlefield 3 and 4 on a 1MB connection as long as your latency is low. It's almost entirely dependent on latency... your ping. And from the speed test, your latency is fine. If it's spiking much higher than normal, I would say it's either your connection type (I had the same problem with a wireless ISP), or someone may be siphoning your connection. Maybe check to make sure your router is secure. Or your router could be failing... but that's probably far less likely.

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-MDR7506-Professional-Diaphragm-Headphone/dp/B000AJIF4E/ref=sr_1_1?s=aht&ie=UTF8&qid=1389157293&sr=1-1&keywords=headphones A little more expensive, but your friend will thank me later. EDIt: Just noticed the Aussie restriction. Not sure how much more expensive they would be down there... :unsure:

Any widescreen format is fine by me. I'm not super picky. My current screen is 16:9 though... as I'm sure most people here have as well.

I could wile away the hours Conferring with the flowers Consulting with the rain... And my head I'd be scratching While my thoughts were busy hatching If I only had a brain...

The coolers are sufficient for stock speeds. Somebody who puts aftermarket coolers on stock components is wasting their money. And MOST people don't OC... When you consider these points, your questions answer themselves.

So that means Linux wins. Because even though he's weird, not very funny, and nobody really likes him, like Jimmy Falon... he's lightweight, fast, and relatively powerful, like Bruce Lee...

I just purchased 3 of them. 2 140mm and 1 120mm (Newegg would only let me buy one, for whatever reason...). They are meant to arrive tomorrow, but we're currently buried under a couple feet of snow where I live, so I expect the delivery to be delayed. Not that this helps you in any way. But you know... I maye or may not be able to give my opinion on them... tomorrow...

Well it obviously did something to damage the drive so... buy another drive. :rolleyes:

The only time I've ever seen such a ring, it was on top of a clear disk with no label... so how you had one "stuck" to the top of a normal disk is beyond me. Must have purchased some brand I've never heard of. Anyway, the foam is probably stuck inside some part of the drive, interfering with the normal operation of it. Short of trying to locate it with a flashlight and a pair of tweezers, or taking the drive apart, just go buy a new drive. With how cheap they are, it's really not worth the trouble of worrying about it.

This.... this post is awesome. I like you. But really, he's right. It amazes me how decent Bethesda is at building games that allow you to do so many crazy things, but so many people just look at how to level as quickly as possible and then have the nerve to say the games are boring when they spent two days creating a ridiculous jack of all trades character that can kill everything on Master and can get mauled by 27 snow bears and frost trolls simultaneously without dying. I didn't really like Gmod though. Sure, you can do anything... but it's not really a "game" per se... it's a tool. I do understand where OP is coming from though. I have games on my shelf I purchased 4 years ago and never finished. And I was one of those kids that would get a game for Christmas and then play the first 3 hours of it over and over again for a year after finishing the story. But ... if you really want to try out some truly great games... try Mark of the Ninja, Shank (1 and/or 2) and especially, Don't Starve. Klei Entertainment is quickly becoming one of my favorite developers because they build games that are just really simple but FUN. No bullshit.

Buy a new one? They're like 20 bucks... Also... foam ring?

apparently, he lost interest before he even saw my first post... :blink:

Apparently, you didn't read my post... At all. It's a bit disconcerting, if I'm honest... :huh: EDIT: Here's an example. Anyone with 3 1920x1080 monitors should be able to simply apply this linked image as their wallpaper and set it to "tiled" and they will have different images on each background. (Unless they have a really odd monitor layout, in which case the image would have to be changed, but that's beside the point...) http://i.imgur.com/X57s2WH.jpg

If you don't mind doing a little math, and don't want to have an unnecessary process running in the background, you can have different backgrounds per monitor natively in Windows. At least, in Windows 7 and I'm sure 8/8.1. Not sure about older versions (though I'm sure it works the same way. All you have to do is add the resolutions of your monitors together, and then create one large image using two or more images (depending on the number of screens) that is the same size as the combined total of the resolution of all of your monitors. For instance, if you have 3 1920x1080 monitors, you would need an image that is 5760x1080 pixels. Once you have this image, simply apply it as your wallpaper and display the picture position as "tiled". It will display the image across all monitors, and if you do it correctly, it should appear as though there are separate images per screen. Even though it's just one image being used on all of them.

Cool. You've selected some of the most ridiculously expensive parts available. Now select some parts that would actually be a kick-ass rig and weren't just selected because they cost $3000 more than the other options.

I quite like the window... *harumph!* <_< But yeah, the version without the window would probably be better for a machine that's just going to be tucked away in a corner somewhere. Plus, the one without comes with the extra side-panel fan mount which would be better for mining anyway. So that's why I linked the one without the window. It really is a great case though. You would expect it to feel really flimsy and lightweight like some other case, but it doesn't. It's quite sturdy and has a lot of nice little features. My only complaint with it was that the cable management holes above the motherboard aren't large enough to slip the EPS connector through, so I had to run that behind the motherboard. But it's not that big of a deal. Plenty of space to manage other cables nicely though.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146075 VERY good case for the price. I have the slightly more costly version with the window and it's wonderful. lol posted same time...

Yeah, that second rig would have been better. Pretty much the same as what I'm running (only I got an R9 270x, which is basically just a 7870 anyway...).

Same, though I'm usually equal-parts bow and daggers. Unfortunately in Skyrim, that meant increasing One-Handed to the point where I was a badass with pretty much all swords. So I eventually started running around with dual deadric swords later on. I do enjoy the assassin-type characters though. Go in, slit one guy's throat... whip out the bow to snipe the dude on the nearby cliff.... it's fun, man. Especially if you mix in the slow time shout. Can shoot 3 or 4 arrows depending on your perks at different targets, and they all get hit at once when the effect wears off. Total badassery.

It could be a bad backlight. It sounds like it's doing the same thing as my laptop's display. It started flickering and then it would just go black all together. I had to close and open the lid to get it to come back on, and then it would just flicker again until it went out. Even if it's not that, it sounds like the monitor is dying. As others have said, try using a different port (maybe swap the cables on your two monitors), and if it continues on the same monitor, you'll know for sure and you should be able to send it to Dell.

I watched 15 minutes... aaaaaaand now I'm done. I love the idea that "blogging" and "web design" are somehow supposed to be easier on a Mac.

These commercials have always made me laugh.

There were some other games like this... I really enjoyed Domination when Close Quarters was released. http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/battlereport/show/2/90127956/ http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/battlereport/show/2/90407096/ I'm Skillet x360a on there... if you couldn't guess. I think my highest ever was around 140 kills... but that was during a 1.5 hour long game on Metro and I was using the M26 Dart glitch. Not really worthy of saving...